The Republican Party's last hurrah

This is the Republican Party's last hurrah. The outcome of the presidential race doesn't matter; the GOP is in a death spiral. Its coming demise might not be obvious from the outcome of this election, but I think it's all but certain.

I'm not talking about the Republican Party that was created in the 1850s by opponents of slavery. That GOP drew its last breath a long time ago. It was trampled to death by the herds of anti-civil rights Democrats and social conservatives that started swelling the Republican Party's ranks in the 1960s.

Since then, the core of the Grand Old Party has consisted mainly of those who oppose the social and cultural changes the civil rights movement ushered in, and a small band of greedy plutocrats. In recent years, this eclectic group of Republicans has been joined by the Tea Partiers. There is one common strand that laces through all these groups: Their membership is nearly all white.

It is this lack of diversity that has plunged the Republican Party toward extinction. Today's GOP cannot survive this nation's rapidly changing demographics. Earlier this year, the Census Bureau reported that Hispanics, blacks, Asians and other minorities now account for a majority (50.4 precent) of all children born in the USA. By the middle of this century, minorities in this country are projected to outnumber whites. But long before then, this nation's changing demographics will alter the political landscape.

In three battleground states in this year's presidential election - Florida (39.4 percent) , Colorado (25.2 percent) and North Carolina (30.6 percent) - blacks and Hispanics are roughly one-third of the population. Soon, the growth of minorities in these states will make them more likely to end up in the Democratic column on Election Day.

With the nation's white population shrinking, and control of the GOP firmly in the hands of right-wingers and their billionaire allies, there's little chance it can increase its piddling share of the black and Hispanic vote.

Support from Hispanic voters for Democratic presidential candidates has grown in recent years.

In 1940, 42 percent of blacks were Republicans, which equaled the same number who identified themselves as Democrats that year. In 2008, 76 percent of blacks were Democrats and just 4 percent said they were Republicans, according to the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.

The new trend in American politics is toward the kind of racial and ethnic coalitions that made Harold Washington Chicago's first black mayor in 1983, hoisted David Dinkins into New York's City Hall six years later and made Barack Obama this nation's first black president in 2008.

Sure, Republicans have had a lot of success racking up election victories with little help from black and Hispanic voters, but that's not going to continue very far into the future.

Like a dying sun, the GOP's impending doom is masked by a final burst of energy that might keep it competitive through a couple more election cycles. But as the nation's demographics change, the Republican Party is destined for the political scrap heap in the not-too-distant future.

DeWayne Wickham writes for USA TODAY.

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The Republican Party's last hurrah

This is the Republican Party's last hurrah. The outcome of the presidential race doesn't matter; the GOP is in a death spiral. Its coming demise might not be obvious from the outcome of this election,